EDUCATION FOR ALL IN EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA UNDER REVIEW AT WARSAW CONFERENCE (FEBRUARY 6 - 8)
Paris, January 17 {No.2000-03} - Whether education for all is a reality in Europe
and North America is the focus of a regional meeting organised in Warsaw
(Poland) by the International Consultative Forum on Education for All,
February 6 to 8, with a view to assessing progress achieved since the World
Conference on Education for All (Jomtien, Thailand, 1990).
Some 300 participants including ministers - respectively in charge
of education, foreign and social affairs - and representatives of
non-governmental organisations are expected to attend the meeting. Six
roundtable debates are scheduled: Planning and Management of Basic
Education; Laying the Foundations of Lifelong Learning; Early Childhood
Education and Development; Education and Work; Education, Poverty and
Exclusion; Democratic Citizenship in the Context of Multiculturalism. A
Regional Framework for Action will be discussed and adopted during the
meeting.
Ten years ago at the World Conference on Education for All, 155
countries and some 150 organisations committed themselves to provide basic
education for all and to reduce illiteracy massively. The time has come to
take stock of what has been achieved. Six regional conferences will make it
possible to group national data for inclusion in a global report which will
be presented at the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal (April 26 to
28). By then, regional meetings will have been held not only in Warsaw but
also in Johannesburg (South Africa) in December 1999; Bangkok (Thailand),
January 17 - 20; Cairo (Egypt), January 24 - 27; Recife (Brazil) February 2
- 4; and San Domingo (Dominican Republic), February 10 - 12.
Although the public might assume that education for all is a
well-established reality in Europe and North America, this is not the case.
Developing countries do not have a monopoly on exclusion from education.
Europe and North America also have teachers who have not been paid for three
years, refugee children attending school under the most precarious
conditions, rural schools lacking even the most rudimentary equipment,
inadequately trained teachers, immigrant children badly integrated into the
school system. The failings of basic education are legion even in rich
countries. We know, for instance, that some 20 per cent of the adult
population in this part of the world have difficulties with reading and
writing. This makes the Warsaw assessment all the more vital.
The International Consultative Forum on Education for All is in
charge of this ambitious evaluation and of those carried out simultaneously
in the other regions of the world. The Forum is based at UNESCO Headquarters
in Paris and is co-sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP), UNESCO, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the United
Nations Population Fund (FNUAP) and the World Bank along with a number of
bilateral agencies.
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